Purim. Lets talk about it.

Actually, no time to talk, there is so much to do.

Maybe too much –

Seudah, Megilah, costumes, parties and more parties, and Mishlochei Manot multiplied by everyone on earth…

Luckily, some friends live too far to get one of those goody-bags.

{Sorry! – Well, almost…}

And it all has to be done in only same 24 hours!

{suddenly Pessach sound so doable…}

And the stress.

I don’t want to talk about the stress, but I’ve found a nice trick to de-stress the Purim preparations a bit:

pre-prepare.

The part of Purim I like the most is making costumes. Not surprising, I guess.

Costumes for the kids, Costumes for the parents, even the furniture in our home gets dressed up sometimes.

And now the Mishlochei Manot too.

Ahead of time

I used to cook jams and pack in jars, bake fresh rolls and home made cookies and search for last minutes ideas for packaging.

Stress. Oh yes.

Too much to handle, and maniac baking ensues.

My solution? Arriving at the Mishloach Manot Battle prepared and with a plan.

And this year, the Mishloechei Manot were going to get costumes of their own.

The kids wanted to join in, so that was two birds and one stone: getting the work done, and a fun and not-so-messy art activity for the kids.

{ I also squeezed in the “Only after you clean up the room from all the dress-ups, and showers, and pajamas, and brush your teeth and…”  Since if you can, you might as well get a few more birds in.}

So here is one fun and easy way to dress up paper-bags for Purim.

We made clowns, but any other figure, animal or shape works too.

Clowney Paper bags

You will need:

• Paper Bags – as many as you need. colorful ones are cute, but brown ones work just fine as well.

• Colorful Cardstock Paper

• A Stapler

• Markers

• Scissors (our scissors dressed up too)

Step-By Step:

For each clown-bag, cut:

• one circle for the head
• one triangular clown hat
• two arms
• one rectangle

{ Feel free to print this image and use it as a template }

• Draw a face on the circle,

• Add a message on the rectangle.

• Staple the hands on each side on the rectangle as shown:

  

• Staple the arms to the fold of the bag.

• 
  

• Fill in the bag with all the goodies

• Fold and staple the head on top

And… you are done!

More ideas:

Add round stickers for a  polka-dot design, some ribbon, or any stickers to expand fun-time for young helpers.

And by the time I wrote this blog post, my clowns got dressed up Andy Worhol style…

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Got questions? comment? Ideas? Let me know!